


Too Late

by Steerpike13713



Series: Exiles Together [3]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Occupation of Bajor, Original Character Death(s), Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: For a tumblr drabble prompt: 'too late'.





	Too Late

“I am sorry to bother you so early, Doctor,” Dukat had said when Julian stepped into the detention area. “But I think we need your help.”  
Julian – twenty-four, dog-tired, still new to Terok Nor –  had nodded and said something like ‘I’ll do whatever I can’ or maybe ‘it’s no trouble’. He couldn’t remember that part exactly, except that Dukat had smiled, and nodded to one of the far cells. A prisoner, he’d said, information vital to Cardassian security, damaged in interrogation but unbroken as yet. He had said, heal him – enough to last a little longer, no need for your best work, doctor, I know these aren’t the best of circumstances. And Julian – twenty-four, dog-tired, new, but not a fool – had nodded, and had followed Odo to the cell.  
He had thought, after this long, he had seen the worst of what people could do to one another, but that was before. The broken body hunched in the cell, the shaking, bloodied hand, not one finger left whole. The face, missing teeth, blooded, bruised, hardly recognisable as Bajoran at all. Julian had knelt beside him, reached out with gentle hands to examine the wounds, trying to ignore the way the blood rubbed off on his own hands, and stained them. There was rather a lot of blood. He was used to that part of it, but-  
The Bajoran slurred something out, but Julian couldn’t understand the words – a strong regional accent, he thought, coupled with the loss of his teeth. Even if he did talk now, the Cardassians would never understand him. One of those broken hands shot out to catch Julian’s wrist, and as he leant closer he could hear the words, unmistakeable now, for all their slurring.  
“Ahn-kay ya, ay-ya vasu. Coh-ma-ra, di-nay-ya…”  
An awful, bloody, gasping cough, and another breath, and another, and another, and still the chant carried on and Julian was frozen for a few long moments before he reached again for his bag and set to work.  
“You ought to have sent for me earlier,” he told Gul Dukat when he stepped out of the cell just minutes later. “He was dead before I reached him.”  
The Gul was still. “I see. Well, thank you for your service, doctor. That will be all.”  
The next day, Julian was called in for some minor medical issue in the commander’s office – a torn scale or some such, nothing one quick pass of a dermal regenerator would not have solved – and so he was there to see it, when the Bajorans were called in. Five of them, out of the ore refinery, dirty and beaten-down and too cowed to look Dukat in the eye. He was there when Damar shot them, one after the other, without a word as to why.  
Dukat sighed. “A pity,” he said distantly, “But without that terrorist’s information, you can see why it must be done.” He smiled, almost indulgently, at the look on Julian’s face, the horror he had not yet learnt to keep safe and tucked away inside. “Carry on, Doctor.”  
Whatever else he was, Julian was still a surgeon. His hands didn’t shake at all.


End file.
